Setting the Sustainability Agenda: The Impact of LuxuryBrands' SDG-Related Tweets on Consumer Engagement

Baxter, Katherine and Garnelo- Gomez, Irene and Perez-Vega, Rodrigo and Histon, Wendy and Sanchez-Razo, Miguel A and Mazzoli, Ilaria (2025) Setting the Sustainability Agenda: The Impact of LuxuryBrands' SDG-Related Tweets on Consumer Engagement. International Journal of Consumer Studies. ISSN 1470-6423

Text Int J Consumer Studies - 2025 - Perez‐Vega - Setting the Sustainability Agenda The Impact of Luxury Brands SDG‐Related.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (1MB)

Abstract

This study examines luxury market brands' communications related to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) on the socialmedia platform “X,” and their impact on online consumer engagement. Our longitudinal study analyses 57,000 social mediaposts by 19 luxury brands (7-year period), revealing that social and environmental sustainability communications are the mostpopular to elicit consumer engagement, while economic sustainability messaging lacks a similar effect. The personal luxuryindustry (which includes apparel, footwear, watches, jewelry, and accessories) was chosen for this study as this industry facesunique challenges and more scrutiny over its practices. The study highlights the importance of sustainability communicationin branded owned media, while emphasizing the role of the brand in shaping the public agenda through the content consumerslike and share. Conceptually, agenda-setting theory is extended in this paper to cover luxury brand communications on socialmedia. In this context, the theory is proven for some of the 17 SDGs; however, for economic agendas, extra strategic marketingpractices beyond online social media communications may be required. Recommendations include prioritizing the reframingof economic sustainability communications and the continuation of the social and environmental sustainability messaging forconsumer resonance.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information and Comments:	© 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Business, Law and Criminology > Liverpool Hope Business School
Depositing User:	Katherine Baxter
Date Deposited:	06 Feb 2026 14:26
Last Modified:	06 Feb 2026 14:26
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/4840

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